pickNYRB comes through again 😸👍 I was not familiar with Monterroso before this and was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. A hilarious compendium of works by and about the fictional writer Eduardo Torres, the bard of San Blas, Mexico. Poet, critic, essayist, and inveterate blowhard, Torres is a fully realized comic creation, a perfect send-up of provincial literary pomposity.
pickQuizá solo semienamorado. Porque ella dice que no, que no me quiere. Y para estar total, completa, absolutamente enamorado, hay que tener plena conciencia de que uno también inspira amor.
pickA short Chilean novel about societal treatment of outsiders or people who choose to live outside the norms.
It‘s a quick read. From the point of view of 12 year old Miguel whose uncle Ramon decided to leave their neighborhood and live in a billboard alone. Ramon has always valued silence, and finds more of it in his isolation.
Definitely has a melancholy cast, but interesting philosophical ideas.
pickI was eagerly awaiting this release even before it was featured in the NYT. This is billed as speculative fiction about what might have happened while Benito Juarez lived in New Orleans while in exile from Mexico. Herrera captures the wildness of 1850s NOLA with all the dangers from violence to illness. 🦟 ⛓️💥
so-soThis book wasn‘t for me and had it been any longer (it‘s not even 100p), I would‘ve DNF. I‘m sure this is me & not the book, after all it was on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize so I‘m sure there‘s something I don‘t see
3 men have travelled to island to go fishing & then it expands into a story of some of the islanders. Then someone dies & they may come back at ghosts, but since they were just introduced, I didn‘t really care
Shamefully late repost!
https://youtu.be/oUHNxemNEek?feature=shared
Introduction
Mystery guest
Week in Review
Patreon news
The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer, James Young (Translator)
The Deluge by Stephen Markley
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Khwabnama by Akhteruzzaman Elias, Arunava Sinha (Translator)
pickHallucinatory fishing trip in rural Argentina. Male friendship, trauma, guilt, myth, grief, belonging and other, violence. Cinematic imagery: fire, huge stingray, dance dissolved to fighting. Dreams of the Drowner. Sparse, intense translation by Annie McDermott. 2024
47 “It wasn‘t a ray. It was that ray.”
79 “Every morning, since the girls died, he wakes up convinced he‘s going to hear that Siomara‘s set herself on fire. He‘s sure she‘ll do it.”
pickSet against the lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Desnoes's MC is a petite bourgeois whose furniture shop was nationalised during the revolution, who lives off his compensatory income, and who by turns supports and hates the social changes with a mix of disdain, arrogance, timidity and self-loathing. He's also misogynistic, sexually objectifies women and is completely self-centred. Desnoes is certainly making a socio-political comment, ⬇️
"Parquear la tiñosa: park the buzzard; leave an unsolved problem in someone else's hands."
I like this Cuban saying, and will be looking for an opportunity to tell somebody they can't park their buzzard with me! ??
